Bitcoin Forum

Since 250k is the limit on FDIC insured money in a savings account, where do billionaires keep their savings in a way that's safe?

May be they are having multiple savings accounts. Or may be they might be storing the money in Current accounts, or FD accounts. Anyway.... most of these billionaires own companies which are not listed publicly. It is easy for them to store the money in their company's accounts.

Most of those money is in stocks, capitals and in hard assets. Only a small percentage is in banks and in cash.

This. Nobody keeps their money in pure cash/banks.

I was thinking like China offshore bank accounts somewhere overseas

Very risky, especially during political instability. They can freeze your funds for being a citizen of a certain country. And your billions will stop earning another billions.

Why use China? There are other offshore countries with decent reliable banks.

Bitcoin and Gold :)

You can get bank insured accounts. Most billionaires or even multi-millionaires will put them in special high-interest accounts. You can live off the interest alone.

More like bonds..

Bonds, accounts investment plans etc. Many ways to invest.

Swiss banks as I have seen in movies :)

Im assuming two kinds of "billionaires"


You have the conservative which I guess would keep in :

Bonds
"stable stocks" (you know, apple, google, etc.)
Swiss bank accounts because swag xD
Precious metals
Other currencies
Real estate
etc...


You have the more modern which I guess would keep in the same as stated above but would take a risk and invest in some more newer things, possibly cryptocurrency xD.

"Billionaires do not keep their money in one place. They have diversified portfolios, owning stocks, bonds, businesses, real estate, etc.
They definitely don't have a savings account sitting around with $1B in it. That's because inflation risk hurts the rich most of all. To keep their wealth from being worth less every year due to inflation, they need to put it to work by investing it, thereby earning more than inflation eats away at it.
But in addition to investing in diversified asset classes, the filthy rich also spread their money among multiple brokerages and financial advisors. That's to make sure that if one brokerage goes out of business or one financial advisor tries to steal their money, they won't lose everything.
One tool used a lot by the rich for estate planning is trusts. Trusts are legal entities (like a corporation or a non-profit or a real person) where the rich can put money outside of their estate. Wills can be contested in probate after you die, but trusts are much harder to fight in court.
In addition to keeping assets out of your estate, you can also use trusts to pay less taxes and to hide your assets. Want to give more money to one of your kids over the other without anyone knowing? You can't do that with a will, but you can with trusts.
A billionaire could have trusts set up for each family member, including some who don't exist yet like grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They could have trusts set up to give money to all their favorite charities. They could have a trust for their house and another for the family business. It can all get complicated pretty quickly.
How do the super-rich define their wealth? Well, they need to keep careful track of everything so that they can pay their taxes accurately. There's income tax on the streams of income they receive from any trusts. There are taxes on dividends and capital gains. There's the estate tax when you die, and there's the gift tax for anything you give away before then. The federal government lets you give anyone up to about $14K/year tax-free. Above that, you get a lifetime tax credit of $1M for gifts. But once you start giving people (or trusts) gifts above that, you need to start paying gift tax, so you always need to keep careful records so that you pay your taxes correctly.
Calculating net worth is usually not too difficult. There are liquid markets for valuing stocks and bonds. You can appraise a house or sports car or yacht to determine its value. It can get tricky if you own a privately-held business; those are difficult to value. They are lawyers whose entire job is to value such private business as little as possible for tax purposes (and vice versa for estate purposes).
But taxes are private; they're just between you and the IRS and your highly paid team of accountants, lawyers and financial advisors. How does say Fortune magazine know how much the richest people in the world are worth? They make educated guesses using whatever information they do have access to.
For example, Bill Gates's wealth comes from Microsoft, which is a publicly traded company. That means that his salary as CEO and Chairman for all those years is public information, as is how much MSFT stock and/or options he was given and how much he's sold. Real estate transactions are always public records.
Those methods for calculating net worth of the super-rich aren't perfect, of course. But the folks at Fortune do the best they can with the information they have access to, calculating all they can and making good guesses about the rest." - from Reddit thread about Billionaires.

They own a lot of land, cars, precious metals and jewelry, art, boats, planes. The more you have the easier it is to keep it safe because you just can't have it all in one place, and if you lose part of it you're still filthy rich.

I wouldn’t advise putting all your savings into Bitcoin, but I think buying some and holding for a while will pay dividends, but as with all investments it's not without risk.

private company
stock
real estate
gold  ???
or maybe in swiss bank like in hollywood movies  ;D

lol. Don't believe everything you see in the movies. Plus, Swiss banks are so 90s lol.

Yeah it's a big bad movie cliche though isnt it.

Businesses, stocks, banks, Property, gold and I'm missing a lot, usually most of their money is stocks on a company or two they own, Bill Gates and MS for example

Some of it in banks, for quick spending, many put most of their cash in precious metals, mostly in gold. Stocks of various companies is also an often used method to distribute the wealth. Maybe some of them invested a couple of ten thousands of dollars in Bitcoin. :D

I don't think a billionaire thinks about money they think about wealth. Money is for poor people, real wealth is real estate, gold, businesses, etc. It's not like a billionaire carries a wallet.  

Everywhere really, Not in one place for sure, i think they spread It as much as possible, in their companies , private banks , real estate, they invest somewhere. They know where to put them safely trust me.. ;)

I thought this was going to be a joke based on the the thread title. Dissapointed.

I guess that they keep it in more places in different ways. Some in banks (Swiss or such), off shore, some in cash, some in gold and so on,

They keep them in many places.  Wasn't it Mitt Romney that forgot to report like 3 million he had in a swiss bank account?  Money in so many places you forget about it, like one would forget they had $20 in their coat pocket.

Me too lol.

Wish I had problems like that, lol.

Yeah, not when the IRS comes after you for 'forgetting' to pay all that tax you're evading and throw you in jail. I'm taking Romney didn't get any jail time though given the fact that he's Mitt Romney?

Corporate accounts

True they would not trust them that or in Government Bonds perhaps and using those bonds to sway policy in their favor

In a garage like Walter White of course. :)

lol... no one forgets about $3 million USD in hard cash. You may forget $20 on your coat pocket. But there is no way that you are going to forget about the millions you have stashed in a bank account. Also, as per my understanding, the richer a person gets, the greedier he becomes. A perfect example is ..... Mark Karpeles.

Yes this is correct. The more money you have, you want even more = infinite loop.

This, paper is paper and will reach it's true value with in 20 years I bet.

They would have most of their money in investments and assets. You can't quite give an exact net worth since the stock market is constantly changing and land values change over time as well. I'm no expert on this but I'd say that most of their money is tied into non-monetary assets. This would include land, companies, and things like hedge funds or stocks and bonds

When keeping money, you actually losing it slowly because of inflation higher than bank interest. So the trick to remain wealthy is having as little money as possible and put all to properties, business, stocks, precious metals and so on.

In shady off-shore account on some nice places like Cayman Islands (The ones who don't like paying taxes).
Others just keep it in stocks,larger bank accounts and gold I suppose.

Somewhere I read that a total of $30 trillion is stashed up in off-shore accounts. That is almost two times the GDP of the US. And the main destinations are Switzerland, UAE, Bermuda, Channel Islands, St Kitts - Nevis and UK Virgin Islands, in addition to the Cayman Islands.

I'm gonna say they keep their money invested in bought off politicians.  Off shore banks, swiss banks anywhere that can be considered a tax haven I guess.

i think Cayman Islands is best for me i want to store some money there and some in bitcoins best option then stocks and shares ;)

They are mostly investing it, they don't keep fiat. They buy diamonds, gold, store them in a safe.

Lots and lots of assets. Not just one $1 million house, but 4 $20 million houses. Not just one $4 million factory, but a chain of stores numbering in the hundreds which are worth $3 million apiece. Not just one $50K car, but a fleet of $50K cars that he uses or loans out to his employees or whatever. Tons of stocks, tons of bonds, tons of investment in money market accounts, tons of real estate investments, the list could go on and on.

Yes most of them have not in cash they have in stock exchanges also and diamonds and gold are safe for them also

That is not true. Most of the billionaires maintain liquid cash reserves ranging in a few millions of dollars. I don't know whether they are keeping it in their own accounts, or their company accounts.

well most of then has already invest their money to all other company to make it grow and have a lot of money

I think that it is better for them to keep it in the company accounts.

They probably won't tell you.

As everyone else said, stocks, commodities, and real estate mainly.

I think there are some billionaires that keeps their money on their desktop :P :) :)

Bitcoin-core.

Only if you ask nicely.

even if you ask nicely yeah they wont tell it to you :D but anyway there are some bunch of boastfull billionaires out there who kept bragging about their whealth

With the recent reduction in the exchange rates, I don't think there are any Bitcoin billionaires around here now. At $450 / BTC, to become a billionaire one should possess at least BTC2,222,222. And right now, the biggest holder is having some BTC980,000.

not inside bitcoin wallets, that's for sure.

Anyone who reaches "billionaire" status isn't so stupid as to keep their wealth in debt based paper

They make their money from issuing that paper, then selling it to the masses for REAL assets such as businesses, commodities, or real-estate. 

perhaps you are right indeed. My bad...

But I must say there is a reason why I can be right :)

You say - biggest hodler have 980,000 BTC  - 1 wallet :)
Why you think he is holding all coins at same address?
He can have 10000 of them with 100BTC on each one  :) Then he is a billionaire :) and he keeps money @ bitcoin wallet :P

But indeed this is likely not really possible an, but not impossible :)

I got my data from here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=316297.0

I'm sure this is something that can be Googled.

Hmm, FED?

You can analyze the blockchain yourself or look around the forums. The information is at hand. Does it matter if he has 1 address with 1M Bitcoin or 1,000 addresses with 1,000 Bitcoin?
I do however doubt that someone invested so much money.

Probably in different accounts, or maybe they have a vault in their mansions  :P

i'm on the bitcoinrichlist (#289)

Properties, industries, fiscal paradyses, investiments of all sorts, and som millions in liquid cash in case of need.

I'd say hidden on the obscenely large estates and mansions.  Bonds and land seem like other probable and possible options to consider.   

A lot of the super-rich do invest in expensive antiques and paintings. An example is here:

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/11/12/francis-bacon-paintings-sell-for-record-142-million-at-christies-auction/

True usually art keeps its value if the collected art is famous enough and it can be used to show status
Like I got 100 plasma TV's behind water proof shielding and a sub woofer in my pool so that when I swim I can still watch television
Oh really I got 1 plasma TV and a Da Vinci from Macys
Oh Touche

Well they gotta do something with their money. I would invest in similar things if I were rich too.

Yes. Collecting paintings are much more attractive than all those dull work in trading stocks and bonds. And as far as I know, the ROI is much higher with the former as well.  ;D